I wanted that for him.
I wanted him to experience what a living hell felt like as I had for years.
Agatha stared down at me, her face suspended between sympathy and ire. I didn’t blame her for her cruelly delivered epiphany or her indecision in the obvious face of my grief. In the past year, I had been the poster boy for the Order. In the entirety of my life, I had been one of its most groomed champions.
Of course, she wouldn’t know that everything was different. That everything had started to change the day Noel beat me in place of Yana, the day my mother was pushed to her death, the day Cosima saved me on the streets of Milan, and then again, the day she was taken from me.
She couldn’t know I’d been fighting against the tidal flow of my preordained destiny hand and tooth for so long, I couldn’t even remember what peace felt life.
Fuck me, I was tired.
Bone-deep exhausted.
I just wanted the Order gone, Noel—fucking monster of a man—punished for his myriad of crimes, and my sweet topolina back at my side.
God seemed determined to prove to me that I asked for too much.
I was fucking determined to prove Him, fate, or whatever the fuck might work against me cosmically, wrong.
I took a small, steadying breath and decided to risk my plan by entrusting Agatha Howard with a portion of my truth.
“My life has been a hell,” I said, “since I was old enough to realize my father was a monster, and it was made once more unbearable when I realized that monster might have killed my mother. Now, poor, spoiled Agatha, it is utterly intolerable because the one woman I’ve ever loved with all my being has been taken from me by the very men who wishes to unite us against our wills. So, you tell me, what option of yours do you think I will choose?”
She stared at me as she deflated, punctured through the chest by my quelling words. A long, gusty sigh leaked out her slack mouth, and she suddenly seemed much smaller.
“You hate them too,” she whispered, her shock robbing her voice of any strength.
“It’s not a matter of hate,” I explained as if to a child. “It’s a matter of revenge.”
She folded weakly into the chair across from me and blinked hard. “So you’ll help me?”
“No, Agatha.” I grinned so wickedly that she jolted upright once more. “I am the man with the plan. You will help me.”
“Six months later, with the help of Agatha and James, Noel was arrested for fraud, embezzling, and money laundering,” I finished explaining to Cosima, who was curled up on her side much like the black cat at our feet into a tight ball, a sleek black silk robe her only adornment.
Even fresh faced with wet, ropey hair, she was still so goddamn beautiful it was hard to breathe whenever I looked at her.
She blinked those big melted butter eyes at me as she absorbed my words, and for once, I couldn’t read her thoughts in her expressive features. Her silence and calm deliberation unnerved me, but I didn’t fidget or press into her silence with a series of blunt questions. She deserved time to process, especially given the tumultuous nature of my story.
“Noel beat me.”
It was my turn to blink, and I did so hard, black spots eroding my vision when I opened my lids again to focus on her.
“That’s why I left,” she explained without intonation, her voice more American than I had ever heard it, stripped of the Italian and British that made her tone so lyrical. “I left because he pulled me away from the crowd, dragged me into the dungeon by my hair, and beat me the way he once beat Yana…he even had his youngest son beat me with him.”
“Youngest son?” I asked hollowly.
It surprised me that after years of monumental discoveries, betrayal, and changes, I could still be so affected by new information.
But it fucking rocked me.
My bones seemed to split under the pressure, my skin so tight and hot I thought it would crack open and my entire body would shift into something less human, something bestial, and that I would remain like that for the rest of my life, deformed by treachery, cursed by the sins of my father.
Then the warm press of a hand was on my cheek and the sweet, spicy musk of Cosima’s perfume was in my nose, cracking through the blackness rotting my soul like dawn light over the horizon.
I looked up and locked my eyes to her, needing that anchor to keep me from flying into a rage.
“Xan,” she said softly as her thumb rubbed over the abrasive stubble covering my cheek. “Noel married Mrs. White in secret just after your mother died, and together, they had a son.”